Former Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang misled several of the company's leaders, including its general counsel and chief marketing officer, about the nature of his relationship with Alice Huang, the Chinese businesswoman at the center of the scandal that ended his tenure, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence reviewed by Reuters.
In the autumn of 2025 and again in October 2026, when press inquiries drew Nvidia leaders' attention to his relationship with Alice Huang and her company Megaspeed, Huang described their interactions as appropriate, the people said. In two separate messages in October, he told leaders including general counsel Tim Teter and chief marketing officer Alison Wagonfeld that the interactions reflected standard business dealings with customers, and in other messages he affirmed the routine nature of his dealings with Megaspeed, Reuters reported.
Huang also discussed taking legal action against the New York Times after it published an article in October 2025 that drew attention to his meetings in public with Alice Huang. Neither Nvidia nor Huang ultimately filed a lawsuit, and a Times spokesperson said the paper received no legal demand.
It is unclear when the relationship became intimate. Photos posted online and verified by Reuters show the two together in the United States, China and elsewhere, dating as far back as December 2023. Alice Huang, a former top executive of Megaspeed International, an Nvidia customer, is under investigation by U.S. authorities over suspicions she was spying for China — an allegation Beijing has denied and Reuters has not independently verified. The two are not related, despite sharing a surname.
Huang resigned as Nvidia's chief executive on Thursday, a spectacular fall from the heights of the chip industry, where he pioneered technology central to the artificial-intelligence boom. In a statement on Sunday, he apologized for being unfaithful to his wife and for disappointing the company, without naming Alice Huang. The New York Times earlier reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with an Nvidia employee, and Reuters reported on Thursday that he had another intimate relationship with a different Nvidia employee.
On November 10, the independent members of Nvidia's board said they had hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an independent investigation, after the Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Huang's relations with Alice Huang and U.S. authorities' suspicions about her. Teter did not respond to a request for comment, Wagonfeld did not immediately respond, and a representative for Huang and an Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment, Reuters said.
Nvidia's stock has fallen more than 30 percent since its October 6 closing high, erasing more than $1.8 trillion from its market capitalization.
